


And the punchline is

by judgehangman



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Desert Bluffs, Explicit Language, M/M, POV Second Person, Self-Mutilation, Strexcorp is Evil, Typical Desert Bluffs Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 15:51:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3983899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/judgehangman/pseuds/judgehangman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your life is a joke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the punchline is

Your life is a fucking joke.

You're called Kevin or so they tell you, you've got a bar code on your wrist and someone's name is on the tip of your tongue and it keeps escaping from your mind like the blood dripping from the soundboard. All your memories are covered in tar, and smiling sunlight, your words are nothing but a calculated blubber of things you are allowed to say and euphemisms to hide the terrible, terrible truth. Everything is yellow helicopters and blinding lights and orange triangles like a bad minimalist advert, and you scratch at the bar code on your wrist as if the ink is going to fade off that way.

They shove you into box after box after box of things you never were, and tie strings to your joints like a puppet and force you to work the way they want to. Pills are put into your hands by emotionless doctors and colourful liquids are pumped into your bloodstream to silence your questions and make you motionless and tired and complacent.

And if you look into the mirror, you realise your eyes are obsidian and your teeth are sharp silver blades and there is something mechanical in how you move. Are you even still a person? You want to be, but everything about you is inhuman and they call your smile unnerving because they do not understand how glorious and hilarious it is.

The only thing that remains is your voice, even if it's trimmed and toned and twisted into something they can control. But as much as you want to scream and call out, you can't remember how to speak for yourself anymore.

You do, however, remember a town before the orange and the yellow and the smiling. You remember a Desert Bluffs that belonged to its people, that lived under the void and the stars and the moon and the blinking lights. Everything has been drowned out by the Smiling God, rising from wherever it resides, to bring the unraveling of all things.

You laugh. You grab a knife and carve a smile on your face and you laugh until you're crying and you keep laughing as they drag you into an unmarked yellow van. They drive you to a tall glass building, not different from the many other tall glass buildings around town, and you know that they want to destroy your memories like setting fire to paper sheets.

What they do not know is that you can always remember, even as the details run from your grasping fingers, because you and this town are one. And you'll always fight against the brainwashing, will always want to remember again and again and again as they cannot erase all your memories without awakening the rebel inside you. So they keep this memory, just out of reach, just a name on the tip of your tongue, a face you cannot exactly remember but you do recall the feelings attached to it, and as much as they want this to be an incentive to keep you obedient like the tie around your neck is a dog collar, they can't understand that you'll only keep finding new ways to see him again.

You're still laughing as they throw you into a dark room, and you are still laughing as you look upon him. He has dark skin and perfect hair, and a blood-stained coat. He ties your arms and attaches wires to your brain, stitches your skin back together without thinking too much about it. You call his name softly, blood and ink-like tears on your face, your smile never faltering. He ignores you, his once warm eyes now glazed over and steel-cold and that's when it hits you and you laugh and laugh and laugh.

Your life is a fucking joke and the punchline is that he doesn't remember you anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this kind of fic sort of has been done to death, but Kevin is my ultimate fave and this kind of has been a headcanon for quite a while and I wanted to write something. It's shorter than I wanted it to be, but anyway, tell me what you think!


End file.
